Sagkeeng First Nation

Sagkeeng Anicinabe people The gathering and trading area of what became Fort Alexander were, along with its peoples, a component of the copper culture, as evident by copper points and artifacts that were found in what became the Fort Alexander area. The source of the copper was the Lake Superior copper mines that are thousands of years old. Some of the Sagkeeng Ojibway people are direct descendants of the Anishinaabe tribes that migrated from a very ancient settlement in the present-day Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario area. Some of the forefathers of Sagkeeng were a component of the ancient copper culture; they brought the copper points and artifacts that have been found around the Fort Alexander fishing, hunting, trading, and meeting grounds. According to the current Sagkeeng government, Sagkeeng Anishinaabe have lived "at or near the mouth of the Winnipeg river (which became Fort Alexander Reserve #3" and Traverse Bay, since time immemorial." This means that some Sagkeeng forefathers were always from this area and they mixed, married, and traded daughters with Anishinaabe and other native tribes. The Anishinaabe peoples began trading with the first French immigrants just a few hundred years ago in this Fort Alexander area now known as Sagkeeng territory. Fort Alexander In 1734, La Vérendrye built a fur trading post, Fort Maurepas, on the north side of the Winnipeg River, north of present-day Selkirk, Manitoba; which was abandoned at the end of the colonial period. Later Toussaint Lesieur, a North West Company (NWC) clerk, built a post on the south side of the mouth of Lake Winnipeg; it was called Fort Bas de la Rivière and functioned as the capital of the NWC Lake Winnipeg district. It became an important provisioning post for both the Native and immigrant canoe brigades. Bags of pemmican, brought from NWC posts on the upper Assiniboine River, were stored here among other goods. The Hudson's Bay Company operated here between 1795 and 1801. In 1807, Alexander MacKay rebuilt the post on a nearby site. Beginning in 1808, the new post was known as Fort Alexander (). Since big game of the area had been over exploited by immigrants in the late 1700s, fish, grains, and garden vegetables were the staple foods of the area. By 1812, the Bas de la Rivière gardens were selling vegetables to the incoming Red River immigrants. After the Northwest and Hudson's Bay Companies merged in 1821, Fort Alexander continued to be operated as a trading post for the natives and immigrants in the region. In 1871, Kakakepenaise (Gekeki-Binesi, 'Hawk-bird', a.k.a. William Mann I) signed Treaty 1 on behalf of the ancestors of the Sagkeeng people. The Fort Alexander Indian Reserve of approximately was surveyed in 1874. ==Treaty==

Treaty 1 was signed on behalf of the ancestors of the Sagkeeng people in 1871. In 2005, the Government of Canada formally acknowledged and apologized for the abuses of the residential schools. In 2007, it authorized payment of a $1.9-billion compensation package to surviving children who had been forced to attend the schools. The Sagkeeng and other Indigenous peoples have criticized the government's Child and Family Services (CFS) for breaking up families, rather than working to hold them together by providing support to parents and children. ==Contemporary life==

The Sagkeeng Anicinabe Government’s current leadership, elected in April 2019, is composed of five elected members : Chief Derrick Henderson; and Councillors Lin Dorie, John Courchene, Dylan Courchene, Erin Courchene, Henry Swampy and Tania Twoheart. The group included Vincent O’Laney (17), and brothers Dallas (16) and Brandon Courchene (18). The trio started with traditional jigging, a First Nations tradition, then fused more modern dance styles, such as tap dancing, into their act. Along with the grand prize of $100,000, they also won a $105,000 Nissan GT-R sports car, an opportunity to perform during Citytv's New Year's Eve special, and the possibility of performing at a venue in Las Vegas. Virginia Fontaine Addictions Foundation scandal On October 18, 2000, the Canadian Press reported that Perry Fontaine, the director of the Virginia Fontaine Addictions Foundation, a Native addictions treatment centre located on Sagkeeng First Nation—and 74 other foundation staff (including CEO Ken Courchene) attended a cruise to the Caribbean that was termed a "staff retreat," which required the then-addictions center be closed. The cost of this trip was reported later to be over $135,000. Health Canada eventually investigated the financial books of the Centre and found massive fraud and kickback schemes which was oversaw by former Health Canada assistant deputy minister Paul Cochrane and Patrick Nottingham, the ex-regional director of Health Canada’s First Nations and Inuit health programs in Manitoba. Cochrane and Nottingham pleaded guilty in the fall of 2005. Cochrane was formally accused by the RCMP, after more than two years of financial mismanagement at the center was eventually charged with one count of breach of trust and seven counts of fraud against the government. Nottingham, was given a conditional sentence of two years less a day and ordered to pay $1.14 million in restitution. According to the RCMP, Perry Fontaine along with his wife and daughter offered bribes to Cochrane, who accepted a $50,000 payment on 11 December 1996; four season tickets for NHL hockey games in Ottawa in 1998, 1999, and 2000; a blue 1997 Jeep Cherokee sport-utility vehicle in April 1998; a red 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee in July 1999; a green 2000 Nissan Xterra sport-utility vehicle for his son Lucas Cochrane in May 2000; free trips for Cochrane and his family between July 1999 and October 2000; and two income tax receipts for fake donations of $5,000 each for the years 1997 and 1998. Cochrane's sons were also given cushy, well-paying jobs at the Centre at his insistence. Fontaine was eventually charged with fraud over $5,000 and sentenced to three years in federal prison. The program has been successfully running for a few years. They work with entire families to learn how to work through problems and keep families together. == Notable citizens ==

• Jerry Fontaine, politician, Chief 1989–1998 • Phil Fontaine, politician, Chief 1973–1977 • Jaimie Isaac, artist and curator • Sagkeeng's Finest winners of ''Canada's Got Talent'' season 1 ==See also==